Artistic Staff

Katita Waldo

Company Membership:

Ballet Master

Spanish-born Katita Waldo trained at San Francisco Ballet School, prior to joining the Company in 1988. With the Company, Waldo was promoted to soloist in 1990 and to principal dancer in 1994, before retiring in 2010. During her twenty-two year tenure, she performed principal roles in a diverse repertory of works by acclaimed choreographers including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Lar Lubovitch, Helgi Tomasson, and Christopher Wheeldon.

In 2004, Waldo set Yuri Possokhov’s Magrittomania, a work she had performed with the Company, on the Bolshoi Ballet. Because of this experience, Christopher Wheeldon, who had worked with Waldo on numerous occasions, asked her to join him as choreographer’s assistant on his creation of Misericordes, also for the Bolshoi Ballet. The work premiered in spring 2007 and was also performed by the Bolshoi Ballet at London’s Covent Garden that summer to critical acclaim. The process of creating the work was filmed and made into a documentary which aired on the BBC in late 2007.

In 2008, Tomasson asked Waldo to serve as ballet master for two premieres from the New Works Festival and in 2010, Waldo was appointed ballet master. Over the past two years, Waldo has served as ballet master on works by Julia Adam, George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Edwaard Liang, John Neumeier, and Renato Zanella. In addition to teaching at San Francisco Ballet and at the San Francisco Ballet School, Waldo has also guest taught internationally as well as across the country, a organizations such as the Maryland Youth Ballet and Marin Ballet.